CNIS Project
Computing, Networking, and Information Systems
The goal of the CNIS Project is to:
Enable seamless access to ground-, air-, and space-based distributed information technology resources (both hardware and software) to enable NASA missions in aerospace, Earth science, and space science.
The CNIS Project is creating a NASA Grid to harness the power of the agency's computers, networks, scientific instruments, and information. This grid system will give NASA scientists and engineers around the country easy access to NASA resources, and to collaborate on solutions to complex problems critical to NASA missions. These experts will now be able to focus their talents on making new discoveries in science, designing new space vehicles, and creating tomorrow's information systems technologies. CNIS will extend the basic capabilities of NASA's existing Information Power Grid architecture beyond ground-based high-performance computing grids into air and space.
Key Project Areas:
• Grand Challenge Applications - Prototype solutions to critical problems of NASA Enterprises that provide demanding requirements to drive the development of CNIS technologies and demonstrate improved problem-solving abilities enabled by CNIS technologies.
• Information Environments - Technologies to build distributed virtual environments and frameworks that support application management and the analysis, visualization and integration of information from distributed heterogeneous sources.
• Grid Common Services - Layer of software (middleware) that allows hardware resources to be accessed and shared in a secure and reliable fashion.
• Advanced Computing and Networking Testbed Research - A continuously improving research
environment composed of computers, networks, storage systems, and scientific
instruments.
